Mental Evolution in Man: Origin of Human Faculty

by George John Romanes

In order to gain a clear conception of this protoplasmic condition of language, we had better first take an example of it as it is presented to our actual observation in the child which is just beginning to speak. For instance, as Professor Max Müller points out, “if a child says ‘Up,’ that up is, to his mind, noun, verb, adjective, all in one. If an English child says ‘Ta,’ that ta is both noun (thanks), and a verb (I thank you). Nay, even if a child learns to speak grammatically, it does not yet think grammatically; it seems, in speaking, to wear the garments of its parents, though it has not yet grown into them.”[220]

Again, as Professor Friedrich Müller says, “the child’s word Ba-ba, sleep, does not mean sleep only, as a particular kind of repose, but rather also all the circumstances which appertain to sleep, such as cot, bed, bolster, bed-clothes, &c.[221] It likewise and indifferently means, sleeping, sleepy, sleeper, &c., and may stand for any variety of propositions, such as “I am sleepy,” “I want to go to sleep,” “He is asleep,” &c.

Of course innumerable other illustrations might be given; but these are enough to show what is meant by a “sentence-word.” The next thing we have to notice is the manner in which a young child particularizes the meanings of its sentence-words, so as to limit their highly generic significance per se, and thus to make them convey the special significance intended. Briefly, the one and only means which the child has of doing this is by the employment of tone and gesture. Here the suiting of the action to the word is a necessary condition to semiotic utterance; the more primitive forms of sign-making are the needful supplements to these commencements of higher forms. And not only so; they are likewise in large part the parents of these higher forms. It is by pointing (i.e. falling back on what I have called the earliest or “indicative stage” of language) that a child is able to signify the place, agent, instrument, &c., to which it requires a sentence-word to apply; and thus we catch our first glimpse of the highly important fact that the earliest indications of grammar are given by the simultaneous use of sentence-words and gesture-signs.

It will now be my object to prove, that in the history of the race spoken language began in the form of sentence-words; that grammar is the child of gesture; and, consequently, that predication is but the adult form of the self-same faculty of sign-making, which in its infancy we know as indication. Being myself destitute of authority in matters philological, I will everywhere rely upon the agreement of recognized leaders of the science.

Bunsen, I believe, was the first to point out that in Egyptian there is no formal distinction between noun, adjective, verb, or particle; such a word as anh, for instance, meaning indifferently, life, alive, to live, lively, &c.[222] Similarly, in Chinese “the word can still be used indifferently as a noun, a verb, an adverb, or the sign of a case, much like such English words as silver, and picture, and its place in the sentence alone determines in what sense it shall be construed. This is an excellent illustration of the early days of speech, when the sentence-words contained within themselves all the several parts of speech at once—all that was needed for a complete sentence; and it was only by bringing them into contact and contrast [i.e. apposition] with other sentence-words, that they came to be restricted in their meaning and use, and to be reduced to mere ‘words.’”[223]

Later on I will give abundant evidence of a similar state of matters in the case of other existing languages presenting a low order of development—especially those of savages. But perhaps it is even of more importance to prove that the most highly developed of all languages—namely, the Indo-European group—still bears unmistakable evidence of having passed through this primitive phase. This is a statement which it would be easy to substantiate by any number of quotations; but I will only call the testimony of one witness in the person of Professor Max Müller, whose evidence on this point may be regarded as that of an opponent.

“Nothing, it is true, can exist in language except what is a sentence, i.e. that conveys a meaning; but for that very reason it ought to have been perceived that every word must originally have been a sentence. The mere root, quâ root, cannot be called a sentence, and in that sense a mere root may be denied the dignity of a word. But as soon as a root is used for predication, it becomes a word, whether outwardly it is changed or not. What in Chinese is effected by position or by tone, namely, the adaptation of a root to serve the purposes of words, is in the Aryan languages achieved by means of suffixes and terminations, though often also by change of tone. We saw that, in an earlier stage, the Aryan languages, too, could raise a root into a word, without the aid of suffixes, and that, for instance, yudh, to fight, could be used in the five senses of the act of fighting, the agent of fighting, the instrument of fighting, the place of fighting, and the result of fighting. For the sake of distinction, however, as soon as the necessity began to be felt, the Aryan language introduced derivative elements, mostly demonstrative or pronominal.”

“The imperative may truly be called the most primitive sentence, and it is important to observe how little in many languages it deviates from what has been fixed upon as the true form of a root ... va, weave, whether as a reminder or as a command, would have as much right to be called a sentence as when we say, ‘Work,’ i.e. ‘Let us work.’ ... From the use of a root in the imperative, or in the form of a general assertion, there is a very easy transition to its employment in other senses and for other purposes.... A master requiring his slaves to labour, and promising them their food in the evening, would have no more to say than ‘Dig—Feed,’ and this would be quite as intelligible as ‘Dig, and you shall have food,’ or, as we now say, ‘If you dig, you shall have food.’”[224]

Thus we may lay it down as a general doctrine or well-substantiated principle of philological research, that “Language begins with sentences; not with single words;”[225] or that originally every word in and of itself required to convey a meaning, after the manner of the early utterances of children. “The sentence is the only unit which language can know, and the ultimate starting-point of all our linguistic researches.... If the sentence is the unit of significant speech, it is evident that all individual words must once have been sentences; that is to say, when first used they must each have implied or represented a sentence.”[226]